It's time to crash in on American cash

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Gabriel Byrne has some advice for the Australian film
industry, reports Garry Maddox.

Irish actor Gabriel Byrne has a suggestion for how the
Australian film industry can get back on track - fight Hollywood
distributors for a share of the profits they send back to the US
every year.

After finishing work on director Ray Lawrence's
Jindabyne in southern NSW last week, Byrne says a
challenge to the American cultural juggernaut could channel funds
to script development for Australian films.

He wants the industry to say "If you want to bring in an
American film, you're going to have to give us a certain percentage
of the box office that goes towards the development of Australian
films".

Byrne's suggestion follows news that the local share of box
office has fallen to just 1.3 per cent last year. He feels that
action is needed.

"I know they've done it in France. Mikhalkov, the Russian
director, is campaigning to have a limit on the amount of American
films that come into Russia. He's meeting a lot of opposition but
what's the answer if you don't take some kind of action?

"Ultimately, way down the road, the cultural voice of Australian
film is not heard anywhere. As a result, we go on thinking about
each other in terms of cliches and stereotypes."

Having worked on two films in this country in recent years - the
Hollywood horror pic Ghost Story, on the Gold Coast, and
now Lawrence's follow-up to Lantana - Byrne says
everything is in place for a powerful industry except the
finance.

"You have great writers, you have terrific directors, you have a
whole stable of international stars, you have great actors, you
have great crew. You have probably the two most important things
that caused them to set up the film business in the first place in
California - you have light, and you have weather."

But, as in other aspects of Australian cultural life, US
corporate power is dominating.

Byrne, best known for his roles in The Usual Suspects, End
of Days and Stigmata, was in Sydney last week when he
offered his provocative observations.

On the coffee table in his hotel room was a copy of the Eugene
O'Neill play A Touch of the Poet, about Irish immigrants
in Boston, which is his next venture on Broadway.

A former archaeologist, cook, apprentice plumber, school
teacher, translator, labourer, factory worker, encyclopaedia
salesman and "really atrocious waiter", Byrne broke into films with
Excalibur , then moved to the American scene with
Miller's Crossing, aged 40.

His latest film, Jindabyne, is based on a Raymond
Carver short story, and co-stars Laura Linney from Love,
Actually and Kinsey, Deborra-Lee Furness and John
Howard. Described as an emotional ghost story, it charts what
happens when three men discover a woman's body on a fishing trip,
but don't report their find until they get back.

"It's about how the death of that girl harms everybody who is in
any way connected with the discovery of her body," says Byrne in an
Irish accent that no doubt helped him sell a lot of
encyclopedias.

"And how people are forced to look into the mirror of themselves
and reassess who they are."

Praising Lawrence as one of the most fascinating filmmakers
around, he adds: "The bigger films are becoming more and more
generic and more and more predictable and more about product
placement and so forth.

"We need to see independent films because we need that
alternative perspective. Those big budget films come not just
complete with their stars but their storylines and their moral
agendas and their resolutions which are completely American."

Byrne sees comparisons between Ireland and Australia, and not
just in the way the two countries are regularly the low-cost
setting for big Hollywood movies.

"In Ireland, there's a sense that if it's an Irish film, it
can't be any good.

"I get that sense here, talking to some Australians, that if
it's an Australian film, it's not really a film. But I've seen some
fantastic Australian films here."